


Stay In Your Coma

by Karaeir



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: (is it even a relationship if one person is unconscious the entire time?), Coma, Disturbing Themes, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Possessive Behavior, Unhealthy Relationships, canon divergence in ep 5, how do I do tags someone help me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:30:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karaeir/pseuds/Karaeir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys falls. Jack isn't there to catch him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay In Your Coma

**Author's Note:**

> So... you know how Jack gets REALLY obsessed with Rhys at the end of Tales?  
> Please heed the warnings, this is intended to be somewhat disturbing. Happens when Rhys and Yvette get to the power core in episode 5 of Tales.

The last words Rhys hears before he falls are:  
“You know, your puny little body isn’t even worth all this trouble, seriously.”

He allows himself a flicker of satisfaction at that - Jack is pretty much growling through the speakers and Rhys feels like he has done something right for the first time since this all began.

And then he slips and he falls.

It’s not his fault, really. The power core wasn’t made to be a background for dramatic, life-and-death situations. It’s meant to be cleaned by a specialized cleaning crew, with safety ropes and non-slippery shoes. With gloves to protect their hands.

Rhys doesn’t have gloves. His flesh hand is sweaty, his metal one hasn’t been working very well lately. It has Pandoran dust settled deep into its joints.

And his shoes weren’t made for climbing.

The fall is not long enough for him to truly feel terror. The only thought he manages is a brief _Oh, shit_. After that there is nothing.

***

If there is one thing Jack hates the most it is not being in control.

He doesn’t feel in control when Rhys runs away from his office. He doesn’t feel in control when Rhys gets into the power core, and he certainly doesn’t feel in control when he watches Rhys fall - eyes comically wide; hands flailing around, grasping for purchase; mouth open in a silent scream.

The horrible crack of Rhys’ skull impacting on the ground is the worst sound he’s ever heard.

There is a moment of silence then, a few precious seconds before he processes what just happened. A bloody halo forms around Rhys’ silent, unmoving body, lying on the floor of the chamber.

Then the woman starts screaming and he is snapped out of his trance.

“Get down to him. Now.” His voice is a low and dangerously, deceptively calm. Removed so far from its usual tone that the woman stops screaming and looks at one of his screens, shock clear on her face.  
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” He growls, desperate. Can’t she see that she’s wasting precious time? Time that Rhys doesn’t have? He so wishes to have a body at this moment. He would wrap his hands around her neck and strangle her, slowly. He’d enjoy it a lot.

But first, he’d get to Rhys.

He calls the medical team - he should have done it sooner, really, he even admits it himself. Every second matters. Or it doesn’t - there is so much blood. At least now the woman is finally doing her job - she climbs down to the bottom, tears staining her face, high-heeled shoes abandoned at the top of the ladder. At last, she reaches the floor and runs to the body.

“Don’t touch him!” he screams, suddenly afraid. Rhys’ form is already twisted and bent at unnatural angles, what if she makes it worse? Damages Rhys even more?

She stills and takes a deep breath.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks, her voice surprisingly steady.

He hesitates for a moment.

“Check for vitals,” he says, finally, “breath, pulse, anything. Just… careful.”

He doesn’t want to think how hollow his own voice sounds to him. The medical team is on the way, under the threat of being spaced. He knows they’re unnecessary. No one could survive a fall like th…

“He has a pulse!”

Rhys is alive.

The world stops and rearranges itself.

Alive.

He cuts off the overwhelming flood of relief. Why does he care? He wanted the kid’s body, sure. Now that his meatsuit is lying on the cold, metal floor of Helios, broken and bleeding to death… That’s not really an option.

He elects to ignore the treacherous warmth spreading through his systems.

He watches the medics as they gather Rhys off the ground and take him away to the hospital wing. He watches them the entire way there, silent. He watches as they rush him into the waiting operating room, silent.

He stops watching then. He has a company to run.

He is secretly glad he can’t dream anymore. His nightmares would be a glimpse of that white, sterile room, with blood on the floor.

***

Time passes. Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty, thirty. An hour, two, three… He stops counting after that and tries to focus on getting Hyperion back in shape. As it turns out, managing everything is very easy if you happen to be a near-omniscient god AI. Things which took him hours of hard work before are now resolved in a second. He divides his consciousness and sets his processes to work on schedules, projects, data security. He is everywhere and nowhere at once, looking through every camera and sensor on the station. He sees all.

All except for the one blind spot in his vision - the hospital wing. There are cameras there, of course. But he keeps all parts of him from straying there.

Monitoring the hospital would be a waste of computing power, after all. His absence there has nothing to do with white tiles, red blood and glistening scalpels.

Finally, exactly 11 hours, 38 minutes and 43 seconds of silence (he hates himself for knowing the time so well) there is a message.

_To: Handsome Jack_  
_From: Dr. Joan Haugen, Head Surgeon_  
_Subject: Rhys_

The message hovers at the edge of his consciousness. He would take a deep breath and drag a hand through his hair if he had lungs, hand, hair to do it with.

He reads. He looks up the medical terms as he goes along. Emptiness grows within him with every word.

Compound skull fracture. Epidural hematoma. Permanent vegetative state.

He reads the last words of the message:

_I’m sorry._

He calls a security team and has them throw the doctor out of the airlock. It doesn’t feel very satisfying, so he throws them out as well.

***

His new body fits him like a glove. It is a beautiful thing, cloned from his own genetic material, with an indestructible metal endoskeleton. It has the highest concentration of expensive tech on Helios, allowing him to stay connected to the mainframe and run the station as he did since his return. There are some issues, of course. He kills a few unfortunate employees who witness him walking into walls when he redirects his attention from his immediate surrounding to one pressing matter or another. The sensory information he gets from his new flesh, so crude and yet endlessly complex, is utterly unlike the data he has grown used to processing. But, of course, he is a genius and he masters managing them both at once soon enough. Once again he is walking the halls of Helios, finally a tangible, terrifying presence instead of a digital ghost.

An entire month passes before he directs his steps to the hospital wing, where Rhys has been staying ever since the fall. Jack got for him the best treatment and the best doctors his money could buy, but hasn’t checked up on him yet.

He doesn’t have the time. It’s what he tells himself as he is relaxing in his apartment at the end of each day.

But even he can’t put it off forever.

He reaches the doors to room 235B. They open for him with a slight hiss. He stops, his eyes closed. He breathes deeply, in and out. Typical smells of hospital assault his nose, making him regret this trip already. He hears only slight beeping and whirring of machinery.

Why does he care, anyway? He offered that kid the world on a silver platter, a chance to make all his dreams come true, and Rhys rejected it. Rejected him. Betrayed him, like everyone else.

There can be only one punishment for treason. He made a mistake letting Rhys live. This has to be dealt with.

He opens his eyes and steps into the room, his brow furrowed, his mouth set in a thin line. He reaches for a pistol he always carries on him, flicks the safety off and points it towards the bed.

And stops.

Rhys is lying there on his back, limp, oblivious, uncaring. He is thin, so much thinner than Jack remembers him, his cheeks hollow, his skin pale and waxy.

He looks like he is already dead.

Jack’s finger hovers over the trigger.

It would be a mercy, almost, to pull it.

He swallows, slightly tightening his grip.

“Well then, kiddo… We had a good run together, you and I. And you fucked it all up. I suppose this is a goodbye,” he says, if only to fill the silence somehow. The sounds of machines are getting on his nerves.

He almost drops the gun when he sees Rhys’ eyelids twitch. He is by his bedside in a flash, reaching out to touch the man’s face.

“Rhys? Rhysie? Pumpkin, can ya hear me?” he asks, suddenly giddy and hopeful.

Seconds pass, then minutes. He traces the soft lines of Rhys’ face with the tips of his fingers, murmuring nonsensical reassurances, then questions, then threats, to no avail. He drops heavily into a chair next to the bed, feeling more tired than he has ever felt. Rhys’ limp arm is lying on the covers, as thin and pale as the rest of him. Jack could count each bone through his skin if he wanted to. He doesn’t. He reaches out and covers Rhys’ hand with his own.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the first thing he sees when he wakes up are cold, pale fingers interwoven with his own.

***

He visits Rhys every day after that. There are no more reactions, but the new doctor (he goes through them like people usually do through tissue paper but this one seems to be worth something) says that a familiar presence may help. So he goes to the hospital and day after day he talks. At first, he only mentions small, everyday things - another dead employee, his hot new secretary, these annoying jerks at Dahl. Slowly and without noticing it he shifts the topics to much more serious ones - the inner workings of Hyperion, the progress of his newest plan, even the tiny shreds of doubt still plaguing his soul.

Rhys listens attentively, or at least that’s the impression he’s making. Jack can sometimes almost hear his voice in his head - he likes to imagine Rhys’ reactions, the minute shifts of his expressions, the tone of his voice when he takes Jack’s new plan apart and improves it.

Jack even starts making pauses in his monologue - and Rhys’ imaginary voice fills them in. It helps Jack think. He’s never had anyone to bounce his ideas off of. He’s never trusted anyone enough for that.

But with Rhys it's different. Of course it helps massively that he is physically incapable of betrayal. And Jack knows, of course, that Rhys isn't really answering him, isn't really talking back at him or agreeing with him or staring up at him with adoration shining in his eyes.

It is still the closest he's ever been with anyone. He feels surprisingly comfortable with that.

And then, one day, everything changes.

He arrives at the hospital late in the evening, as he usually does. But Rhys is not the only person waiting for him. There is the doctor, pacing nervously next to Rhys’ bed. When he sees Jack enter the room he lights up, his wide, friendly face radiating excitement.

“Sir! I believe, if I may say so, that we have a breakthrough!”

“A… breakthrough?” Jack is tired and only prepared to deal with Rhys, but he forces a semblance of a pleasant grin onto his face. The result is somewhat grotesque, but the doctor doesn't notice.

“I've recently changed the patient’s medicine to a new, quite experimental drug. The results were astounding! I believe that he's on his way to a full recovery; or at least as close to full as is possible in this case. He will never walk again, but with proper treatment and rehabilitation he will speak. His memory and cognitive functions should be just as they were before.” The doctor goes on and on about the details and consequences and doesn't see the way Jack’s face freezes. His thoughts are a jumbled, incoherent mess, a mixture of joy and doubt and terror.

Finally, he raises one hand and interrupts the doctor.

“How soon can he wake up?”

“With the aid of this drug? In three days. Without it he will regain consciousness in two weeks, give or take a day.”

“Thank you,” Jack forces out, his throat tight and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, “leave, now. I have to think.”

The doctor notices that something is wrong, so very wrong, and he is smart enough to hurriedly take his leave. When the door hisses shut in his wake Jack walks to the bed and sits down on its edge, next to Rhys’ leg. He doesn't speak - he just sits there and waits for his digital brain to make sense out of everything again.

He ignores notifications of life support failure in sector 4; of rising prices of titanium; of a bandit attack on one of his outposts on Pandora. Time passes and he contemplates what it would mean to let Rhys wake up. Time passes and his thoughts inevitably turn to the memory of Rhys’ betrayal, of that one horrible moment when his plans fell apart.

He looks up to see Rhys’ face, soft and peaceful, lit up only by the glow of the moon. He remembers how angry Rhys was, his expression distorted in fear and fury, tense and ugly somehow.

He reaches out and touches Rhys’ cheekbones. It may be just his imagination, but he thinks that Rhys leans into his touch just a bit.

He makes his decision.

In an hour the good doctor joins countless others on the orbit of Pandora.

***

He comes back to his apartment late, after a long day of managing the company. He doesn’t ever stop working, of course, but his physical presence is no longer required. His employees seem to work better when they can pretend that he is still just flesh and blood, that he isn’t always watching, always present.

And he enjoys this ritual he crafted for himself - every day he comes back home and makes himself some food - he doesn’t need to eat, per se, but he finds the preparations relaxing. Then, he goes to bed. The body needs rest.

The elevator doors open and he steps into the penthouse apartment, on the highest floor of Helios. He takes off his shoes and lets his feet sink into the carpet. He just stands there for a moment, enjoying the view - Elpis shines brightly, far, far below him - and listening to the steady beeping and whirring of machines coming from the bedroom, familiar and reassuring. _Everything is fine_ , they are saying, and he trusts circuit much more than he trusts people. 

He says, quietly, as if to himself:  
“I’m back.”

Finally, he heads into the kitchen.

“Today’s been pretty boring. Everyone’s too scared out of their asses to step out of line.”

There is no response to this statement, but he doesn’t expect there to be one. He grabs fresh vegetables from the fridge and sets to cutting them. His hands are inhumanly steady and precise, like a machine’s.

“And, don’t get me wrong, it was real fun at first. In the first month alone three people died of heart attacks when I made some random alarm go off near them.”

He goes through the motions of making a vegetable omelette. Working with food is soothing to him - a chance to create and then destroy in a span of a few minutes. There is a level of artistry involved as well.

Also, he’d never let anyone but himself touch his food. Even now, when death lost its meaning.

He tosses the omelette onto a plate, sits at the kitchen table and starts eating.

“But, shit, y’know what? Heart attacks are boring. Reaaaally boring. Too fast, not enough, blood, screaming, spilled guts, you know how it is. Where’s all the struggling? At least when I push someone out of the airlock they kinda flail around for a bit. And then they stay out there for a while, scaring the crap out of everyone. That’s useful, at least.”

He goes on like this for a while, talking about the daily working of Hyperion while he’s munching on his food. But, suddenly, a warning flashes through his mind. He hears the beeping from the other room speed up a bit. He sighs and leans back in his seat.

“One of these days, huh?”

He gets up and walks to the bedroom.

There, on the great, king-sized bed, in a nest of wires and pillows, lies Rhys.

He looks good, Jack thinks. His skin, while still pale, has regained some colour. He will always be thin, but it’s his natural state, not a thinness of a dying, sick man. His hair has also grown considerably - it falls to his shoulders and spreads out on the pillow in a great, bronze curtain.

But the lines of his face are hard. His eyes are moving violently under his lids, his hand grasps the sheets, his skin is covered in sweat.

Jack sighs again. With a thought he sends a precise, detailed instruction to one of the machines keeping Rhys alive. He sits at the edge of the bed and gathers the younger man into his arms, putting his head on his chest. He strokes Rhys’ hair with one hand and watches clear, blue liquid making its way through the drip connected to the young man’s vein.

Rhys gasps and moans slightly, attempts to pull himself away from Jack, but he isn’t aware enough to do anything. Jack pulls him even closer and keeps him immobile, waiting for the chemistry to do its job. He pets Rhys’ head and makes soft, cooing noises at him, tells him to just relax, it will be fine, it will all be fine if he just stops fighting.

Inevitably, Rhys’ body stills, his muscles uncoiling, his erratic breathing slowing down to a calm, measured breath of deep sleep. He slumps against Jack’s chest, once again lost in his dreams. The lines of his face smooth, his lips open slightly, and it’s the most beautiful thing Jack has ever seen.

He pushes a strand of hair from Rhys’ sweaty forehead and presses a chaste kiss just above his eyebrow.

Calm, peaceful, healthy.  
Perfect.  
His.

“Just sleep, pumpkin. I’ll take care of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> So that's that. My first fanfic btw. Comments and kudos very much appreciated.
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr!  
> karaeir.tumblr.com


End file.
